On a laptop whose primary OS I am converting to Gentoo, I have a minimal Xorg GUI system installed and for the most part working well. However, there is one significant issue appearing related to the Synaptics touchpad, for which I have compiled the driver into the kernel. I also included "synaptics" as one of the options in 'make.conf' for INPUT_DEVICES.

Specifically, the device does not seem to respond to any tapping, such as I might do, for example, when I have moved the cursor over an icon or menu item and I then tap on the pad to select it. This tapping functionality is missing although I can use the device's left-click or right-click button to make selection. The pad does register the movement of my finger across it and move the cursor accordingly, but it does not sense the tapping directly on it. If someone has any information about this, I would welcome hearing about it.

Thank you very much for the pointer, haarp! That was the perfect clue I needed to find the relevant configuration settings. It now works. It never ceases to amaze me how the little things can make such a big difference. A little tap leads to a big savings in time, not to mention frustration. Muchas gracias.

and yes synclient TapButton1=1 totally fixes it. i think im going to write a generic config that sets synaptics the way it should be. single tap kinda gives me the impression it conflicts with the odd 2 finger scrolling.